It is precisely 70 miles from the ramp onto I-80 from University Avenue in Berkeley, to the University of California Marine Lab dormitories near Bodega Bay. The final 30 miles are a motorcyclist’s wet dream of sweeping bends, tight turns, brief straights, and challenging compound esses.
I’m enrolled in the course, “Marine Invertebrates” taught by Drs. Robert Smith and Cadet Hand at the Marine Lab. It is one of those courses that could be typified as pure hell or as peak life experience. It was both. We worked our asses off, rising every morning before dawn, collecting the weirdest creatures on earth, taking field notes, listening to lectures about them, dissecting them, reading about them, drawing them, and failing night after night getting to sleep at a reasonable hour.
Strongylocentrotus purpuratus became poetry on our lips and a prototype for our understanding of echinoderms. Likewise, Anthopleura xanthogrammica for sea anemones, Pachygrapsus crassipes and Hemigrapsus nudus for shore crabs, Urechis caupo for the phylum Echiura, and so on. However, Caprellids were my favorite characters of the marine invertebrates. Each seemed to exude individuality and purpose, although with a comic aspect.
Weekends are our own, mostly. We threw beach parties in Horseshoe Cove with guitars and beer while braving the unending chilly winds. Students studying geology came to the parties with hard liquor and eschewed our supplies of brew. One of the budding geologists explained that their multi-day field research expeditions required an absolute minimum of unnecessary weight, hence they partook only of the distilled versions of drink. I rather suspect that affectations of maturity also played a role.
Weekends sometimes found me commuting back to Berkeley on my 250cc Yamaha YDS2 motorcycle for social events or for class pre-enrollment. The motorcycle’s top speed was a hair over 90 mph but getting up there from 85 mph required keeping it at full throttle for another ten seconds or so. I rarely saw 90 mph on the speedometer.
My trips to Berkeley were schizophrenic. For a stretch on the 2-lane country road i would be the world-renowned motorcycle racer, carving arcs through tricky asphalt courses, and for the next stretch i would be caught behind traffic, lackadaisically enjoying the scenery. Then i would blast past the bloated automobiles and trucks with my fine-tuned instrument of speed and slice through the landscape with verve and artistry. And then came the sedate miles on freeways where i simply droned through boluses of cars driven by half-conscious automatons.
Returning to the Marine Lab from Berkeley was always done late on Sunday so that i could practice my craft on the winding roads without the presence of clumsy sluggish cars. My preparations included filling the tank with premium and with a calculated amount of 2-stroke motor oil. I fit a black nylon scarf over my nose and lower face and tied it in back of my neck. I put the clear plastic lens into my goggles and adjusted the goggles on my face over the top of the scarf. I then held my helmet by the strap and by the ring, pulled on them to spread the opening, and fit the helmet on my head. I breathed very shallowly as i threaded the helmet strap in place since my goggles easily fogged over while standing still. Quickly as possible i drove off so the airflow would prevent my goggles from fogging up and i could again breathe normally.
As i turned off of the elevated west section of University Avenue onto I-80, i checked my Timex for the exact time and then zipped my leather sleeve over the watch. Then it was onto the freeway quickly reaching and holding firm at 75 mph until the exit onto Cutting Boulevard through Richmond. Minor frustration as traffic lights turn red on my approach. Finally i’m back on the short stretch of highway before the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
At the toll booths i pull three one-dollar bills from inside my gauntlet glove and pass it to the toll-taker with not a wasted second. Then it was back up to 75 mph while continuously on the lookout for Highway Patrol cars. Leaving the freeway at Petaluma, i move through the town streets as quietly and quickly as possible without attracting the attention of the local gendarmes. Then along Petaluma Boulevard and a left turn onto Washington Street which becomes Bodega Avenue.
As the road leaves suburbia and adopts the character of a rural road, the Yamaha announces its freedom with full-throttle high-revving screams. The motorcycle and i are one again; there is no sense of a person operating a vehicle. The vehicle is part of me as i am part of it. I feel the road under my tires. I feel the heat building and dissipating in my brakes. I am aware of the maelstrom in my engine and the films of protecting oil that allow such incomprehensibly fast movements of steel and aluminum.
The illuminated speedometer needle creeps up to 90 mph on the first long straight. The air is suddenly colder and it feels solid against the black scarf. Back down to 80 diving into the first set of sweeping bends where the uneven pavement jars my tires and pumps my shock absorbers up and down. Then back up in speed until the right bend onto Valley Ford Road. There are no other vehicles. It is our road; our obsession.
At times, i have the impression that we are hurdling through a tunnel; a tunnel bored through darkness by the light from our headlight. There are times when our memory of the road fail us and we slow more than necessary out of caution. I make a mental note of those sections of road so that we can make the ride more quickly on some future Sunday night.
We slow, attack the left and right turns past Valley Ford, and then accelerate up the grade into the forest west of town. Full on the throttle, we set up for, and execute, the left-right jog in the road.
Eyes reflecting headlight! Deer! A dozen in the road!
Tires squirm on the asphalt under hard braking. The deer are motionless statues. We cannot stop in time but there’s a narrow pathway between the deer over toward the left. Still hard on the brakes, we aim for that opening. We pass several deer statues and are down to 50 mph as the buck on the left of the opening suddenly comes alive with a toss of his head and a rippling of muscles. He swiftly bends legs to enable a leap; a leap out of fear; a leap to escape; a leap into our path.
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He bounds. Our headlight and handlebars whisk through his forelegs; his antlers remove the flesh from my jaw and open my neck; vertebrae snap from the mutual impact at 45 mph. I’m still conscious but i seem to be a sideline observer. The deer and i twist apart. It’s dark except for sparks from the Yamaha crazily gyrating and sliding on the pavement. I bounce in the darkness but feel nothing. I slide to a stop. My head hurts. My ears ring. Face going numb. Nothing.
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His four hooves slip on the asphalt and his chest falls hard on the road. My left boot brushes his antlers as he joins the darkness that follows us. We fly past three more deer as they begin moving in fear. Then the headlight shows nothing but empty road ahead. I release the brakes and check the rearview mirror. Behind us is only darkness.
We slowly build up speed while i consider our narrow escape from disaster. Perhaps i should become cautious and drive the speed limit, but that calculation does not work. Had we entered that left-right jog at speed limit, all of the deer might have recovered from their paralysis as we braked into their midst. A collision would have been nearly certain; albeit a collision at a lower velocity and therefore less likely to be fatal. On the other hand, had we not braked at all, we would have passed that buck before it moved. I evaluated the parameters of a bizarre calculus that considers the duration deer might remain unmoving in an approaching headlight, the time needed to pass the last of them, and the distance needed to come to a complete stop before reaching the nearest of them. I internalized that calculus and opened the throttle wide.
Back up to 80 mph. We back off for a sweeper to the right followed by a left-hand sweeper and past the turnoff to the town of Bodega. The twin cylinders push us back to 80. Off the throttle and a touch of brake as we set up for a bend to the left followed by a second left-hand bend.
Damn! Eyes reflecting light and close ahead. Eight to ten deer unmoving in the road. Not possible to stop in time. The calculus is easily evaluated. I pin the throttle full open and pick out a path through the herd. Back up through 70 mph, 80, 85, and we scream between the deer inches on either side. Then they are behind – in my past – and i had not seen so much as an eye-blink from any of them; they were immobile statues. I imagined they would remain unmoving statues for all time but i knew they must now be scattering in panic.
I back off and set up for the high-speed sweeper to the right, then accelerate briefly before braking to take a right sweeper that feeds into a slower left turn. Then back up toward 80 while negotiating a sweeper to the right, followed by left and right sweepers that take us to the straightaway paralleling the bay’s eastern shore. Flat out up to 90 mph as we pass homes along the road. I almost, but not quite, feel guilty for rending apart the placid atmosphere of Bodega Bay with our 2-stroke scream. I imagine we’ve woken slumbering dogs in house after house who then yowl and bark at the offending clamor. We brake and dive left down the connector to Bay Flat Road.
Here the pavement is smooth but often damp and sandy. I cannot bring myself to taking these turns at ten tenths or even nine tenths. The previous uneven pavement constantly informed us as to our limits of adhesion. This smooth pavement refuses to communicate with us. If we ask for a little too much traction, it would abruptly deny support and we would be down and sliding into who-knows-what. We accelerate into the 70’s on the gentlest bends but dare not brake too hard nor lean too steeply for the tighter bends.
We brake to a stop at the intersection of the dirt road that leads to the Marine Lab. I zip back my leather sleeve to check the time. Sixty-two minutes! Damn! We missed our goal by a lousy two minutes! Maybe next time.
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